Review: How to Break an Undead Heart by Hailey Edwards

Reviewed by Jen

Oh Hailey Edwards, you crafty crafty lady. You make me feel things.

This book kept me so riveted, I read it in one sitting. The kind of book that made me stay up way past my bedtime on a work night so that as I write this the next morning, my eyes are bleary but my insides are still squeezing tight over the events that transpired.

Read any reviews about this series and you’ll find how often people say the heroine, Grier, can’t catch a break. And it’s so true. It is a crappy, crappy world that she lives in. No one can be trusted. And I mean no one. The climax in the last book should’ve tipped me off. The title of this book should’ve tipped me off. And yet when everything came crashing down, I felt sideswiped. And that’s good writing, people.

You know what else is good writing? Subtly laying the groundwork for all of this, so that when it came together, it made complete and total sense. The downside I had about a particular character or the interest I had an another. Expertly played.

Clearly, I am trying not to spoil you and probably failing spectacularly. One scene does not make this entire book, but it’s the one I can’t let go. And neither will you.

All that said, this is a road trip book of sorts. Someone new is attacking Woolly and it is affecting Amelie. Grier is worried that her sigils or her involvement is putting her best friend in danger, so she leaves with Linus to go to the university where he works in Atlanta, for answers. There, she sees even more sides to him than the quiet, thoughtful man that lives in her carriage house or the dutiful scion to his mother who knows all the sharp corners of society. Linus fascinates me. And he is so clearly in love with Grier that I just want to scoop him up in a hug. I feel it in my bones, and still part of me is waiting for his position to make him act against her. After all, everyone else does. (Sorry, I’m going down the rabbit hole on that again.)

A lot of people are trying to kill her. Some new faces, some old. And with these characters, the world is expanding. Like the supernatural high rise where Linus lives and the mysterious beasts who guard it. Like tidbits on Grier’s birth family and what it means to be goddess-touched. There’s a ton of action, plot twists, and characters I love, side by side with characters I now love to hate.